Session title: Recruitment: Increasing the impact

Typical inspection issues

Did you know that due to the absence of Recruitment from the CIF, this essential step of the learner’s journey is rarely evaluated through either inspection or self assessment..

Duration

Recruitment: Increasing the impact is a half- or full-day session.

Information for event organisers

For all providers, a healthy intake of new learners each year is essential for stability and investment. An overly simplified summary of some providers’ recruitment strategy, however, might be:

market provision: website, prospectus, schools liaison, etc.

keep fingers crossed until enrolment.

In other words, the provider has no way of really gauging potential enrolment numbers before it’s too late to do anything about a short fall. At the heart of proactive quality improvement, however, is a central guiding question. This question is not ‘Did we achieve our aim?’, but: ‘Are we achieving our aim’. When this is used to design (or review) a recruitment strategy, the impact can be profound.

In this session, delegates set out precisely the impact they want to have on potential learners. For instance, giving year-11 learners the ‘vocabulary/ammunition’ with which to win playground arguments about the best place to study at aged 16; creating advocacy around the staff who will be teaching them; becoming an aspirational destination, no matter what the level or type of programme of study. To do this, they are shown how to produce a Quality Standard for Recruitment.

Once this aspirational phase is complete delegates then go on to set out the indicators they will need in order to know that they are achieving their desired impact. Without these data, staff cannot change tack if their strategy is not working. Once the draft indicators are in place, the innovative thinking can begin: the great ideas they’ll create to achieve their aspirational aims. This almost always challenges and changes the status quo. Here’s an example from one recruitment project:

A catering department wanted to become an aspirational destination for graduating year-11 pupils. Staff decided to create an inter-schools competition along the lines of Bake Off. The entry standards for the competition demanded more skills than most catering pupils had, so the college offered all schools a masterclass demonstration and training session free of charge. This benefitted the school as it created intrinsically motivated pupils to study hard. It benefitted the college as the proactive, practical schools liaison work created advocacy. This advocacy spread to parents when they attended the competition in the college’s studio kitchens. The department changed from being a provider of last resort to an aspirational destination.

Information for potential delegates

If you feel that life would be easier if your provision was an aspirational destination, the first choice for your potential learners, and that your recruitment numbers were sufficient to give you the financial and staffing stability needed for sleep-filled nights, then this may well be the session for you.

We will look at the precise attitudes and attributes you want your new learners to have on day one, then begin to design the recruitment strategies to produce them. We will also look at the indicators you will need to evaluate the extent to which your recruitment strategies are producing the impact you want – before it’s too late to do anything about it.

This session will enable staff to:

producean aspirational Quality Standard for Recruitment

set out the dataneeded to monitor the on-going impact of recruitment activities

begin to designthe creativestrategies needed to meet their aspirations.

Timing

The half-day version develops delegates skills to design a new recruitment experience; in the full-day version, delegates will go on to complete the first drat of their strategy. The half-day session can also be integrated well with the following in a staff development day: